The Secrets of Jin-Shei (67 page)

“I was remembering, so that I may write your story into the Book of the Clans when the time comes,” he said. “You were our wild bird, who rode the storm winds to her freedom. It is thus that I will have them remember you.”

“You are always…” began Zhan.

“I know,” Raian said, interrupting gently but firmly. He slipped off the stool where he had been perched, and guided Tammary back across the room. Taking one of her hands, he folded it into Zhan’s, and looked at them both with the luminous eyes of a seer, or a holy being on the edge of enlightenment. “Take care of her,” he said, and then, glancing from the one face to the other, corrected himself. “Take care of each other.”

Tammary wrote to Tai after she and Zhan had settled down into the small house by the lakeshore that had been his inheritance.

Tai’s response came very late, months after Tammary’s letter. She spoke of the turmoil of the city, of the breaking of the
jin-shei
circle, of the future, of the past. It was interspersed with verses of her latest poetry, some of it visionary, even prescient.
I have had dreams about you,
Tai wrote.
I dreamed that all was ashes except where you stood, and there were flowers at your feet, and a bird circling in the sky high above your head. And you held a child, wrapped in swaddling bands. It was as though you held the hope of the future in your arms.

Tammary had occasion to answer this letter not too much later, in a dizzy whirl of unbelieving joy and awed gratitude.
I don’t know about the future,
she wrote.
I don’t know about the ashes, and the flowers, and the bird of your dream. But there will be a child. It will be born in the spring, as the winter leaves the land. And it is the flower of every hope I have ever held in my heart.

“G
one? What do you mean gone? Gone where?” Liudan demanded when they came to her and told her of the aftermath of Khailin’s battle and presented her with Lihui’s mortal remains, the Ninth Sage’s Ring. Liudan seemed almost oblivious of the ring itself; her fingers were closed around it with such ferocity that Tai, focused on Liudan’s hand, winced at the sight of the Empress’s long manicured and lacquered nails digging into the soft flesh of her palm. “I gave her no leave to abandon the project. I certainly did not sanction her disappearing like this. Where is she?”

“That note she left us is all we have,” Tai said. “Liudan, she achieved what you demanded of her—she fulfilled your command—what you asked for was simply impossible to deliver.”

“We know so little of what really happened,” Nhia said. “Have you talked to Maxao?”

“Maxao sent word,” Liudan said waspishly, “to tell me that I need no longer fear Ninth Sage Lihui or his ambition. Or, for that matter, Maxao’s own—although he denied that he ever had any. But I know, I know ambition when I see it, and his was always there, banked, waiting. The only reason he didn’t make a bid for the throne was because he never had the luck to get hold of the right pawn.” Liudan laughed, her voice suddenly harsh as a raven’s caw. “It does seem, doesn’t it, that there are plenty of choices out there for those with ambitions of Empire. If it isn’t Lihui and my father’s daughter, then it’s Zibo and my mother’s child.”

She broke off, her fingers shifting convulsively around the ring she held, her eyes going blank for a moment as she seemed to contemplate her precarious position and her mortality.

“I can go and seek Qiaan again,” Xaforn said quietly. “Perhaps she can still be rescued. Without Lihui, she is not …”

“She is who she is, with or without Lihui,” Liudan snapped. “I don’t see those who have raised her name as their banner dropping their claim now. It’s too entrenched; they’ve come too far to turn back. They will simply replace Lihui at the top, another would-be Emperor.”

“I think you underestimate Lihui,” Nhia murmured. “He led by mesmerizing people. He knew how, he had the power. It will go hard on anyone who now tries to step into his shoes. Even Maxao …”

“Maxao!” Liudan said. “I was a fool. I regret now not having acted long ago—at the very least, I should have had him locked up when I last had him here,
explaining
things to me. All I need now is for him to declare himself Emperor. Or find some way to announce that Khailin had yet another claim. Come to think of it, he probably knows exactly where Khailin is.”

“Liudan,” Xaforn said patiently. “Let me go look for Qiaan.”

“But it’s Khailin that I want you to find!” Liudan said. “Khailin, and her knowledge! If she succeeded once, she can do it again.”

“Her house is burned, her laboratory gone,” Tai said.

“She can build another.”

“Let her go, Liudan.” That was Nhia, her voice gentle, very soft, as though she were speaking to a mutinous two-year-old. “Let it go. She did what you asked; and when she saw that it would destroy you, she obliterated the knowledge. She was obeying the law of
jin-shei
in the best way she knew how—she had obeyed the command given in the name of the sisterhood, and then she acted to protect a sister from harm. You can ask no more of her.”

“I can still command, from the throne of the Empire,” Liudan said.

“That, unlike the
jin-shei
request, can be refused,” Tai said, “and you knew that, because otherwise you would have never gone the
jin-shei
road at all.”

“But refusal of a direct Imperial command is treason,” Liudan said. “And the punishment for treason is …”

“Death, I know,” Tai said sharply, “and then Khailin would be dead and you would still be denied your prize.”

“If she could do it, another can,” Liudan said, eyes glittering. “I will find out.”

“Would you have us all meet Yuet’s end?” Tai said, losing her temper. “The only chance you had was Khailin, who did this for you as secretly as she was able, until Maxao stepped in with his own ideas. Now it’s out in
the open. You will find no takers, not even for an Imperial command. And if you did, the mob would devour them before they had a chance to do anything at all. Them, and maybe you, too. Would you lose everything over this obsession, Liudan?”

Liudan stared at her with eyes of black obsidian, cold and blank.

Take care of my sister,
Antian had said, her dying words. Sometimes, Tai thought peevishly, she really did feel like throwing her hands up in the air in despair and demanding of her long-dead first and much beloved
jin-shei-bao
just how she was supposed to protect Liudan from her worst enemy, her own self.

They left Liudan brooding on the ring she cradled in the palm of her hand, the only tangible thing that had survived the disaster of Khailin’s attempt at forging the immortality the Empress had craved, and when they were out of her presence and out of hearing range, Xaforn turned to the other two.

“If she won’t give me leave,” she said quietly, “I’ll just have to do it without. I don’t think she has any idea of how utterly vulnerable Qiaan is right now, with Lihui gone and the rebellion without a guiding hand at the helm.”

“They could let Qiaan choose his successor,” Nhia said. “In any event, they will still need her to front their plans.”

“Nhia, you haven’t laid eyes on Qiaan for a long time,” Xaforn said. “When I last saw her, she was Lihui’s creature. I don’t know how he did it, but he controlled her, completely. He told her she was royal, he told her she could rule her nation and help her people—and in the beginning, that was what might have held her. We all know what kind of person she is, always in the throes of some scheme or another to better people’s lives. But by the time I came to her, it was past that, long past that. All that mattered was that she would be Empress, and he would be her Emperor.”

“I don’t understand,” Tai said desperately. “Why did he do this? He had everything he could have wanted—power, position. What made him reach for an Empire?”

“You’re right, he had it all,” Nhia said. “But then he lost everything. Khailin took care of that. The only way he could be powerful again was to rule in the physical realm. And the only way he could hope to succeed in that was by reaching for the Imperial Tiara. That way, he could have done what he wished, stayed in control. That’s all he ever wanted—to be the one who made the rules, the one who was obeyed. When he discovered
Qiaan and her heritage, he must have thought all his prayers had been answered—she was the bridge to all the power he could ever have wanted. If he needed to make her a part of himself to do it, to marry her, he would have done it. He would have done whatever he needed to do.”

“He was not,” Tai said, recalling the conversation she had with Maxao in the living room of her home not so very long before, “that different from Sage Maxao.”

“Yes,” Nhia said abruptly. “He was.”

“But now he is gone, and Qiaan …”

“She will be lost now, and utterly alone out there, perhaps with people who will think she is now more of a liability than an asset,” Xaforn said. “I have to find her, before they kill her.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“The same way I did it the last time. The ghost road.”

“But that time you had Khailin to help you,” Nhia began.

Xaforn smiled, a tight little smile, as she reached for her hand. “This time,” she said, “it will have to be you. You’ll have to look out for me.”

“I don’t know nearly enough,” Nhia said. “I would be more danger than any guidance I can give is actually worth to you.”

“I need an anchor, here,” Xaforn said. “Khailin is gone, it will have to be you. You are the only one of us left who knows anything at all about the ghost road.”

“Xaforn, if you bring Qiaan back here, it might only be for Liudan to wreak her revenge on her instead of her erstwhile allies. You do realize that if Liudan gets her hands on Qiaan, she’s dead?”

Xaforn tossed her head, her long braid swinging. “There is no honor in revenge.”

Tai grimaced. “I don’t think honor is the foremost thing in Liudan’s mind right now. She is on the edge of something very dark.”

Xaforn gazed at her with sympathy and with affection. “Qiaan is my responsibility,” she said. “I’m afraid, Tai, that Liudan is probably yours. I couldn’t tell you which is the thornier path right now, but if anybody can help Liudan claw her way back to us out of that dark place you speak of, it is you. Tammary always did say that you led a charmed life—never stop reminding Liudan of that life, never take that from Liudan’s sight. Your own brand of quiet contenment is healing balm—enough, perhaps, even for Liudan’s turbulent spirit.”

“If it were only that simple,” Tai said, tears sparkling in her eyes.

“Nhia?” Xaforn turned back to the Chancellor of Syai, who was rubbing at her hip with the flat of her hand, a grimace of pain on her face.

“Sometimes,” Nhia said, “I swear the Gods of Cahan get together and play games as to what part of me they can make hurt the most. I’ve been standing too long, my bones ache. Is it all right, Xaforn, if I wait for you while sitting down?”

“Go, Xaforn,” Tai said. “May the gods be generous with their goodwill. Go, find Qiaan. Bring her home.”

Think of her face,
Khailin had said. Xaforn tried to remember an earlier face, a happier face, but all that kept on coming to her mind was the dreamy, faraway look on Qiaan’s face as Lihui had drawn her to his side; she fought against it, resentful that she could seek for Qiaan only by the moment of her weakness. She was focused on her quarry as she stepped onto the pale ribbon of the ghost road, so intent that she barely glanced left or right at the glimpses beyond the mists. She thought she smelled blood once; she glimpsed a quiet courtyard with sunshine spilling on moss-overgrown flagstones, a silvery pennant with an unfamiliar symbol on it, a white cat grooming itself by a fireside, a moonlit ocean lapping at an empty beach. But the images were fleeting, barely enough for her eye to identify them, and she walked on, with a purpose, with grim determination.

When she stepped off the ghost road, it was with some surprise that she found herself in a familiar place. She recognized the streets around her. She was in Linh-an, still in the city, not very far from where she had started; the ghost road had provided a short cut to Qiaan, but this time she had been hidden in plain sight, almost within shouting distance of the Palace itself.

Twilight was darkening into full night as Xaforn emerged into the street and the ghost road shimmered back into oblivion behind her. She stood in an open doorway in the outer walls of a house in a rather affluent residential district, underneath a blue-tiled pagoda roof. The street at her back was empty, but there was a knot of people in the courtyard, maybe half a dozen of them or so, huddled around something in a corner. One of them held a guttering torch; by its light, Xaforn could see that another clutched a long-bladed knife. A knife dark with blood.

“Finish her off, for the love of Cahan,” someone said in a low voice. “Then we can take the carcass to the Empress and at least get amnesty. Nobody can prove anything against any of us, so long as we all stay quiet.”

The one with the knife hesitated, and Xaforn clearly heard another voice, a familiar voice, blurred but trenchant.

“You might get more for me alive. Amnesty and gold. But oh, I forgot. I know who you are.”

“You be quiet,” the one with torch snarled. “Well, Miun? Will you do it, or do I have to?”

He barely had time to complete his question. The hiss of a descending blade right beside his ear made him shy away violently, dropping the torch. It rolled away, and extinguished itself against a wall. The courtyard, now lit only by a muffled spill of light from a half-open door, plunged into shadows. One, slightly more solid than the others, moved among the men in a blur of deadly grace. Nearly all of them were down before they had a chance to know what was happening. Two ran. Xaforn dropped one with a high kick before he could reach the inviting open door to the house; he fell hard, and his head connected with a solid thud with a protruding corner of a wall jutting out into the courtyard. The other ducked out of the outside gate and into the street. Xaforn might have pursued him, but a sound behind her made her pause—a sound that was at once a moan and a knowing laugh.